Friday, January 06, 2012

"There's no way Aquaman would behave like that! What a mistake!" you and I and the guy down at your Ye Olde Locale Comice Booke Shoppe have declared at one point or another, unless, of course, like most people, you've never even read Aquaman. ("He can talk to fish, right?") But to contradict the immortal words of Colin Hay, that isn't a mistake...it's what we in the comics fandom field call characterization. In the style of a good-old fashioned Smallville Elementary spelling bee (which Lex always won), I shall now use that word in a sentence: "Hank Pym is a wife-beating psychopath. That's not a mistake, that's characterization." In short, comics are perfect, flawless, and infallible, much like the Pope, who is, after all, a canonical character of the Marvel Universe.

Hey, that vampire stole Deadman's costume! But even though you shouldn't spit in the wind, tug on Superman's cape, or pull the leotard off the dead Boston Brand, that's not the mistake. Read the final panel carefully: what in context should read "battery part" instead says...

With all due respect, Mister Dave Lanphear...tee hee!

Of course, as the popular bumper sticker inspired by Forrest Gump says: "Typos happen." But they usually don't happen in a comic book created to help kids read:

Or, maybe this spelling is correct and this is actually the French Spider-Man: L'Homme Étonnant D'Arachnide! Il fait tout ce qu'une araignée ne! Anyway, good job at not being credited, anonymous letterer of Spidey Super Stories #40...we salute you!

Sometimes the misteakmisstake error can be chalked up to what Cool Hand Luke called, in between mouthfuls of hard-boiled eggs, "a failure to communicate." In an industry with many creators (and yet so few credited as such), it might be a misunderstanding or oversight between the scripter and the penciller or the colorist, like this example where dialogue says it's two-thirty and yet the clock reads...well, I really can't tell what time it's supposed to be, with those identically-sized clock hands in impossible places.

It's not 1:12 (what would be the hour hand is too far past the one), and it's not 2:08 (the "hour" hand is past the two). Gosh, this one's a tough call, because I like the work of both Ron Marz and J.H. Williams and I don't wanna place blame at anybody's feet. I could do what usually is done in comics (blame the editor), but instead I'm going to attempt an in-universe explanation to earn the DC version of a No-Prize (a Bob Rozakis Answer Man Award?) Here we go: The correct explanation is that Kyle Rayner can't tell time.

And from what I can tell in this comic, Kyle Rayner can't tell colors either. Kinda a handicap when you're fighting guys with different colored rings, I would think. Maybe that's why they each have subtlely distinct logos, for Green Lanterns who are chroma-impaired. Say, how do you think G'nort and Dex-Starr get around those limitations?

Here's another case of the editor not noticing a contradiction between the script and the art, from James Robinson's Justice League of America. Not pointing any hooves coughcoughrexoglecougheddieberganzacoughsneeze. But what's that? It's from the second-to-last ish of Justice League of America before the Flashpoint reboot into the New 52? Justice League of America volume two, 2006 series? The issue before they just all give up and disband the Justice League? (Which seems to be the way they end JLA series these days anymore.) That one?

Oh, 'nuff said then!

Panels from Justice League of America #59 (September 2011), script by James Robinson, pencils by Daniel Sampere, inks by Wayne Faucher, colors by Andrew Dalhouse, letters by Rob Leigh

Oh, well, I guess as long as Eclipso has ended all life in the universe and taken up his throne of skulls just like the Darkseid/Thanos wanna-be he is, then it's no wonder the JLA busted up. "Dudes...we're dead. We can rest now." "That's treasonous talk, mister!"

Sure, Eclipso destroyed everything (hopefully including the 1992 Eclipso: The Darkness Within annuals). No lights. No planes. No motorcars. Not even any stars...

Yup, that's right. There ain't a single star in the sky. There's millions of 'em.

You can hardly blame Eclipso...he's too busy chillin' in his big chair, watching his widescreen TV made of skulls, so he hasn't noticed. Shame that he destroyed all the universe's nachos, though.

Sometimes a blooper in a comic book is attributable to nothing more than good-old fashioned Murphy's Law-abiding technology. Here's a case where an entire set of pages (a signature within the comic) got the wrong colors printed. First, on a correct page: here's the way '70s Marvel hero stuntman is supposed to look, in a red and white costume...

And here's the way he shows up on the error pages...in a green costume. Wow, he's not only a great stuntman, he's a quick-change artist as well!

Red dots turn into blue and yellow; red and white into blue and white...look, I don't understand it aside from the color register was is printed. Now's a good time to get out that coloring chart from Marvel Age in the 80s and follow along with its four-color glory! Me, I like to pretend that halfway through the comic book the Human Fly got changed into a Kree and was transported to do battle on a Kree cowboy outpost. And then Kree Farrah Fawcett types up a report for Kree Charlie! Lookit those pages fly! There must be less gravity on the Hala-Deadwood planet.

She's also typing that it's the end of the series, which, you gotta admit, is a great ending for a Marvel comic series in the 1970s. "I'm telling you, Shooter, it'll be great! Everybody turns into a Kree soldier at the end of the final ish! The kids'll love it!" "Whatever. You wanna write this new Micronauts thing, Bill?" Of course, another mistake is that the letters page is telling us about the next issue. Also, for some reason, the letter page is covered with flies. It was a risky but bold move of Marvel to print all their comics in 1979 on past-expiration-date lunch meat, huh?

Here's one last one...see if you can help me figure this one out. Madame Hydra tells Whirlwind he's late. The appointment was at eight o'clock. Whirlwind arrived at 7:45. So he's not late. In fact, he thinks he's 45 instead of 15 minutes early because he thought the appointment was at 8:30.

What's the point? Perhaps the point is don't put seventy-three people working on one comic book. Perhaps the point is Scott Lobdell. Maybe the point is Heroes Reborn. But me, I'm gonna go for the easy guess and tell you that the point is...it was the nineties.

That about wraps it up for our little tiptoe through the lutips of weird and wacky bloopers and blunders in comic books from Marvel and DC, although there's always more. (I've got a whole folder full of 'em.) And at least, as I said at the beginning, you can count on a few universal constant truths that are always part of a character. For example, Aquaman talks to fish; we all know it, and that's that.